Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 294 posts

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#131

Post by Silhouette »

hueving wrote: post #110
Silhouette wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting question for two-sided operations like Google and Facebook. Having a near-monopoly in online search also gives Google a near-monopsony in online search advertising. Likewise for Facebook with social networking. I'm wary of introducing regulation without clear evidence of its necessity. However, there is a reasonable argument that if exploiting a monopoly to gain advantage in an adjacent market…

I'm sorry, but what are you suggesting is harmful here?

Businesses too small to have a real point of contact with either Google or Facebook living or dying by the whims (or mistakes) of their algorithms, for one thing.

Prices paid by the advertisers more generally, for another. There are only two games in town, and both of them go out of their way to obscure what you're really getting in return for your money.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#132

Post by dcre »

confounded wrote: post #108
StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

> I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off Pretty much proves the point: Even people who actively dislike the company and product exhibit engagement and retention that other consumer apps would kill for. It sounds like you've been using it for a decade! It's less of a 'product' than a globalized, cross-generation, ubiquitous social norm.

Exactly right. OP is a monthly active user every month!

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#133

Post by pm90 »

frandroid wrote: post #62
blowski wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Facebook's global reach, every year is going to be election year. I appreciate nobody spends on elections quite like the USA, but there's still a lot of money to go around in other countries.

> I appreciate nobody spends on elections quite like the USA The scale is nowhere close. Maybe if you include black money, India might be a contender, but how much of that is spent online?

> Maybe if you include black money, India might be a contender, but how much of that is spent online?

Not much. And besides, I don't think you could spend it online even if you wanted to. Unless Facebook is accepting cash payments for ads in India ;-).

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#134

Post by exolymph »

StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

> Maybe I live in a bubble

Correct.

> Am I just COMPLETELY out of touch?

Yes.

> Even if it's the latter, aren't they near a saturation point by now? Once everybody's signed up, where's the growth come from?

New markets like India.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#135

Post by calvinbhai »

StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

Are you truly logged off? Are you sure you don't see ads based on your online behaviour? It's easy for FB to still make money from a user who uses FB rarely. Your action (of uploading photos) leads to your grandma providing engagement for Facebook. To show banner ads, video ads etc.

Even I was thinking FB will be down any time soon, but it looks like they are doing a good job, milking more and more money from the market!

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#136

Post by bishnu »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #130
chollida1 wrote: post #5

Some fun Facebook facts from the earnings call/report - Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. - Facebook's headcount is now at 20,658. That's up 43 percent since last year - Average Revenue Per User Rises 23% to $4.73, Down from 4Q 2016 -…

Wait... So FB makes $1.60/mo per users through all that invasive marketing? ...Can I just give FB $5/mo to not keep their creepy profile on me? They get more money, I get not as creepily tracked.

No, because the set of users that would take FB up on this offer are the ones advertisers would like to reach most, and the subscription revenue would not come close to offsetting advertiser losses.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#137

Post by diminish »

confounded wrote: post #108
StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

> I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off Pretty much proves the point: Even people who actively dislike the company and product exhibit engagement and retention that other consumer apps would kill for. It sounds like you've been using it for a decade! It's less of a 'product' than a globalized, cross-generation, ubiquitous social norm.

Also mundane communication among family members, friends, coworkers and relatives have been brought online and monetized the very first time on a massive scale of billions of people. So your mom says "happy birthday" to you and FB monetizes. You check that person you were curious, and FB monetizes you.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#138

Post by evincarofautumn »

StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

I’m 26 and still visit the site every day, as do many of my friends (ages 20–30 or so), and we do most day-to-day communication via Messenger. It all depends on what happened to gain traction and retention with your friend group, I guess.

There’s certainly a lot of political bickering on public posts—good lord, look at the comments on Donald Trump’s page—and I think FB is the go-to place for older people to do that, but it’s not something I engage in, so you just don’t see my part of the iceberg.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#139

Post by lossolo »

adventured wrote: post #68
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Facebook has a massive, $35.5 billion hoard of cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities. It's the third biggest S&P 500 company by this metric that isn't paying a dividend, after Berkshire Hathaway and Alphabet. How many companies in total have more than $35.5B cash/equivalents? Including Apple, for example.

Ignoring debt: Microsoft ($126b), Apple ($256b), Facebook ($35b), Berkshire Hathaway (near $100b), Cisco ($68b), Google ($92b), Oracle ($66b), Softbank (a lot), Amgen ($38b), Ford ($40b), Samsung ($73b), Johnson & Johnson ($39b), GE ($82b) There are a lot of financial entities and the like that have more cash than that of course. It's held under a different financial context than the cash that eg Apple is sitting on.…

This is a problem, a lot of money that is not going back to the market. It's taken out of economy making it impossible to redistribute it again. It's not healthy.

Re: Facebook Profit Jumps 71% Year-over-Year

#140

Post by adventured »

exolymph wrote: post #134
StevePerkins wrote: post #77

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I just assumed that Facebook would be on a decline trajectory by now. Their website is almost meaningless to my day-to-day life at this point. I login once every couple of weeks, upload some pics of my kids for Grandma to look at, and then log off. I don't personally know anyone who still uses it regularly as we did back in 2007. I don't know a tactful way to put this... but it seems lik…

> Maybe I live in a bubble Correct. > Am I just COMPLETELY out of touch? Yes. > Even if it's the latter, aren't they near a saturation point by now? Once everybody's signed up, where's the growth come from? New markets like India.

> Once everybody's signed up, where's the growth come from?

> New markets like India.

Even without much further user expansion (such as via India), once 2 billion are signed up, that's when the real money starts pouring in. From zero to 2 billion monthly users, is nothing compared to how much money they'll print as they slowly climb from 2 billion to 2.5 billion or similar.

From 0 to 2 billion over ~13 years, cumulative $15-16? billion in profit. Which is likely to be about what they earn just in 2017. Their money printing machine is just about to get interesting.

With 2 billion users, Facebook can start pressing their monopoly in all sorts of lucrative directions if they see fit. They could buy up PayPal and Shopify, integrate them into the core Facebook platform, enable real ecommerce directly within Facebook, and go after Amazon etc with an attack more like Alibaba (no inventory, a platform that makes money via ads).

Post reply on HN